opening PDF in PHP

[BSF]

Could anyone tell me how (or if) to open a PDF thru a PHP script without using PDFlib?

[rehfeld]

fopen()

[BSF]

thanks,

I phrased the question wrong. I know how to open files i.e. fopen, but how do I display the pdf, i.e. using the fopen doesn't display the pdf. do I stream it? or is this simply a problem with my IE or IIS?

thanks anyway,

it was a syntactical thing using windows. sorry to waste your time.

[rehfeld]

well you could just use fopen to read the file into a string, then echo it

you could also use
echo file_get_contents()

prob the simplest and maybe most efficient way would be to use readfile() which will output the contents of the file directly.

you will need to send the proper mime header(s) before streaming out the file though

i dont know the proper headers offhand but im sure if you read the user comments for header() you will find them.

[Roger_Ramjet]

from the manual

<?php
$len = filesize($filename);
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Length: $len");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=foo.pdf");
readfile($filename);
?> 

[BSF]

thanks, rehfeld and Roger thats just what I was looking for..